Helena de Bres, "Artful Truths: The Philosophy of Memoir" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
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What is the overall focus of the episode and who are the hosts?
Hi everyone, this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder of the New Books Network, and I'm also a historian. I used to be a history professor, and I love maps, so I'm especially happy to tell you that this episode is sponsored by What's Your Map, which was the winner of the Best Education Podcast at the 2025 British Podcast Awards. What's Your Map is hosted by historian and prize-winning author Professor Jerry Broughton. In each episode, he invites a guest to share a map close to their heart and unfurl the ideas, inspirations, and stories behind it. I can tell you I've listened and it's fascinating. The podcast is in its sixth series and is enjoyed by audiences around the globe. You can explore all the maps in the podcast online.
at oculi-mundi.com while you listen. Jerry's guests include Zakiya Suwel, who's an English broadcaster and writer on Finding Albion, Yosh Schmidt, who's the head of maps at the Zurich Central Library, Pat Seed, a U.S. historian on Ptolemy's World Map, John Romero, who's a legendary video game producer on The Doom Game Creator, Elif Sharak, a well-known Turkish-British novelist, and Chet Van Duser, Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co-host of the channel, along with Robert Talese, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together, we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books and a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Helena de Bresse, associate professor of philosophy at Wellesley College. We're talking about her new book, which is Artful Truths, the Philosophy of Memoir, which is just out from University of Chicago Press. What is memoir? What makes a memoir both non-fictional and literary? What are the memoirists' moral obligations to the people they write about besides themselves and to their potential readers?
And is the writing of memoir just indulging in narcissism or even revenge? In her new book, Debris examines the philosophical issues that the memoir genre raises, given the doubts we may have about whether people can write the truth about themselves, whether the demands of literature will overwhelm the demands of truth-telling, and even whether there is such a thing as a unified, persisting self to write about. DeBras defends the nonfiction status of memoir while acknowledging that memories fail, we often engage in self-justification, and it can be difficult to draw a line between the experiential truth that the memoirist tries to capture and falsity. She deftly navigates issues in metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics in this highly readable examination of an evolving literary form.
Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Helena Debray. How are you? Welcome to New Books and Philosophy.
Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be here.
So I'm very excited to talk about your new book, Artful Truths, The Philosophy of Memoir. So before we get to the actual content of the book, maybe you could tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to philosophy and how you came to write this book.
Yeah, thank you. How did I come to philosophy? Well, I've always loved writing. So I've sort of seen myself primarily as a writer since I was a kid. You know, I wrote a novel when I was 11, a terrible novel, but a long one. That's something. And in high school and college, I was mainly interested in literature to begin with. But I was taking philosophy classes in college too. And at a certain point, my interest shifted over to that academically. Okay. I'm not really sure why. I think part of it is I always had an inclination towards order and structure. So I like the way that philosophy helps you to understand the world in a systematic way, break down big problems into little ones. And also just the sensation you get when a philosophical argument breaks through your preconceptions, causes a fundamental shift in how you see the world.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the overall focus of the episode and who are the hosts?
0:00–9:14
2
How does Helena de Bres introduce herself and her journey to writing a memoir?
9:14–37:59
3
What definition does the conversation give for a memoir and how does it differ from autobiography or essay?
37:59–52:44
4
What are the three “fictionalist challenges” to memoir as a nonfiction genre?
52:44–56:01
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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